by Ron Landram, Vice President, Risk Services-Nevada

From The Construction Zone: March 2001

Anytime a serious workplace accident occurs, someone is going to want to take a close look to see exactly what happened. It could be OSHA, it could be your insurance company, as a minimum, it should be someone from your company.

The accident scene must be preserved and left as close as possible to the way it was prior and during the mishap. There are two main reasons for this: The first is so the puzzle can be pieced back together to make a determination as to what happened in order to take corrective action to prevent it from happening again; the second is that sometimes it is necessary to gather physical evidence to be used during potential future legal processes.

At the Scene of the Accident:

The first and most important task at an accident scene is rescue and assistance of the injured. The second is emergency action such as fire response or evacuation. The person in charge at this point is the senior emergency responder, normally a fire chief or a police officer. As a senior manager, you should offer assistance but be mindful of their instructions and cooperate. Emergency crews may have no choice but to disturb accident evidence; this is normal and you should not object. Once the scene is stabilized, someone should assume the role of on-scene manager. Only one person can be in charge, if there is a conflict, get it resolved quickly.

Nevada regulations require that OSHA be contacted within eight hours of a workplace mishap that involves a fatality or hospitalization of three or more workers. The term hospitalization means admitted to a hospital. In other words, if workers are treated and release, no notification is required. If you are required to contact OSHA, or have knowledge that they are responding, then the accident scene cannot be disturbed.

OSHA does not always need formal notification from an employer to respond to an accident. The police, fire department or the coroner might contact them. In any case, when OSHA is on the scene, they are, for the most part, in charge.

If you find yourself in charge of an accident scene, it is your responsibility to make decisions as to preservation of evidence.

For example: An employee is seriously injured when a high-speed cutting wheel explodes. The employee has been transported for treatment and the scene stabilized. You can bet that someone is going to want to look at the cutting wheel parts and the tool it was mounted on. It is your duty to protect and preserve that evidence.

Before the scene is disturbed, take photographs of everything related! Film is cheap, so take lots of pictures. A word of caution, digital photography may not be acceptable as evidence, so it’s best to photo document the old fashioned way, with film.

When you gather and impound evidence, mark it, label it with a tag, or even a slip of paper, and put it inside a zip lock bag. Mark the location, date, time, and the name of the collector. If you transfer it to someone else, document the label again with the name of the person you entrusted it to. If an outside source, such a government agency, or an insurance adjuster, impounds evidence, get a signed receipt with the date, name and time of transfer.

When string evidence, lock it up whenever possible, if it’s not possible to lock it up, put it out of the way of the curious.

Your approach to this whole evidence thing should be that you could sit on a witness stand and state that the item under discussion is exactly as it was when the accident occurred. The chances of you having to do that are small, but you should be able to do it just in case.

As your insurance carrier, a big part of our job is to insure that your costs are kept as low as possible. Sometimes we can do this by transferring the costs of a claim to the responsible party, who could be the manufacturer of tools or materials, or even another company working on the same job site. However, the responsibility for the claim and it’s costs cannot be shifted without solid evidence, and how you handle the onsite investigation could make all the difference.